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In today’s corporate world, the CHRO must not just keep up, but stay ahead of the game. The CHRO is a key piece to a company’s business strategy and plays an important role in securing the right talent, engaging with people at every level to execute the strategy and nurture a good work culture to make sure the employees are motivated and eager to work.

With strategy and culture rightly aligned, businesses can pivot faster and drive positive business outcomes. Despite general belief, an HR leader’s role has very little to do with the administrative bit and more about being a strategi partner to a CEO. In reality, the true potential of the head of the people function lies in being part of the important boardroom discussions, business strategy, customer meetings and ensuring everyone has a shared understanding of their role in the room. 

Understand Your Business Well

The people leader should be able to read and understand the implications of a balance sheet just like the other C-Suite leaders. To play a driving role, one must truly be able to understand the market, product strategy, as well as aspects like cost efficiency, positioning, delivery, and branding.  It is important that the CEO understands the versatility of such a role in a successful business. A Chief People Officer is eventually a business leader with an expertise in HR.  

Drive People Efficiency

Hiring the right people defines how successful a company will be as they bring in the potential, the true talent and culture of collaboration that drives the company’s key offering – whether it’s a product that the company sells or the people who create value for the product. The quality of the service and subsequent interactions with customers or the overall growth in the company are dependent on the employees. People define and decide how well the company performs and how efficiently they can do their jobs. Capitalizing on the efficiency of your people becomes extremely integral to truly support the growth of your company.

Making Difficult Decisions

Whether it is taking a call on where to invest or when to pull back or assessing the impact of a senior leader in his current role or setting up a new business function in the organization, the head of HR must be ready to take on different challenges in this role. It might be understanding the compliance aspect or needs of the client or discussing the financial implication of a new acquisition, being a part of the board means figuring out how to support these decisions, taking stock of your resources, aligning structure and ensuring the idea itself is sustainable for the company in the long run.

Invest in the Right Resources

To make the right strategic decision and have the executive team in sync, one must focus on crystallizing what a particular job requires and realistically assessing whether the assigned person meets those requirements. How can one define the policies of the organizations, the benefit structure of the organization, where to hire and how to retain current talent pool, it all has to connect to the business agenda. Investing in the right resources to attract and retain the best-in-class talent pool can help create parity between the people and business function of a role of a CHRO. 

Examine the Right Issues

The Chief People Officer must work alongside the CEO and the executive board to understand the pain points and the challenges of the business. Analysing missed opportunities, countering a competitor’s premium offering, or recovering from an economic slump, it is important to examine the cause of the most pressing issues your team is facing. One must factor in all short- and long-term implications and avoid any knee jerk solutions. 

Every C-suite leader heading a business function is responsible for the growth and smooth running of its respective business vertical in a company. One of the reasons people leaders must focus on their business functions is to be aware of all conversations and business outcomes from each vertical. One must understand whether a leader is being able to deliver or has in fact been slowing the rest down or has not been able to counter a problem efficiently. 

The key is to understand where the gap lies and how one can address certain critical issues at hand. Gaining the trust and support of the executive leaders need strategic approach and preparation. As a strong HR leader, one needs to focus on delivering business values to become the right person to advise the CEO. CHROs should be prepared to recommend actions that will unlock or create value. It is important to empower the right talent within the organization to continue to create a better place of work for your current and future workforce.

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Ruchi Kulhari

In her role as the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Coforge Limited, Ruchi oversees human resources for North America and Europe. With close to two decades in HR leadership in the IT services industry, she has gained deep expertise in organizational design, succession planning, coaching, and employee relations. Ruchi provides management-level counsel on short- and long-term business and HR strategies, implementation, and metrics. As a strategic advisor to business leaders, Ruchi tackles challenging and complex human capital issues. She is also a member of the Forbes Leadership Council, representing a community of world-class business professionals and career coaches. Ruchi believes in the power of agile organizations, with a workforce that is future-ready and well empowered. To that end, she has counselled global teams across organizations to transform leadership experiences using internal initiatives and helping leaders identify and achieve key business goals.

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